Pathetic in the sense that this is one of those things a person should be able to outgrow – like acne. (No, I haven’t completely outgrown acne, either, but, like a skinned knee, at least it comes much less frequently than when I was young.)
There was no time for tears – I skinned it on a street corner in Chicago, with a couple of cars waiting at the nearby light. One of them hung back (I think) to check that I was okay, and I really didn’t want them to share too long in my humiliation.
The bruise on my other knee and the tenderness in my ankles (both of them, oddly enough), is actually far worse than the skinned knee. Sigh.